The Science of Starting Over
by lingeringday
Summary: Jim would’ve made a joke and bought her a fire-engine red swimsuit and then pretended to be David Hasselhoff for a whole day. But nothing's the same. Jim/Pam, Pam/OC, Jim/Katy


**The Science of Starting Over (I'll probably regret it:)**

(I am about two years too late posting this fic. Set in between the second and third seasons.)

* * *

June 10th comes, and June 10th goes, and by June 11th Pam is in the Bahamas without Roy. No one ever expected her to go through with her honeymoon; not without Roy and a wedding ring on her slim white finger. But then, no one ever expects the impossible from her.

It is impossible, or at least it would have been to the Pam Beesly that's been with Roy for the past eight years. God, eight years? It sounds strange even to her. She isn't sure what to do, what to think, who to be. Should she be herself? But that didn't go anywhere good, just to a failed wedding and a best friend who ran away to Australia to get away from her. Can she reinvent herself? Maybe kind of like Jan? Strong and calm and cool and collected and gathered and poised. Poised Pam. Sounds kind of like a bad advertising slogan for some sort of jam in the seventies. Or like, that cooking spray. Come to think of it, didn't they use that as an ad once?

Right. So poised is out, she thinks as she contemplates the ties on her bikini bottoms. Maybe not Jan, then. Besides, she's kind of… weird around Michael. Almost like what Michael was saying was tru- No. No way.

It's about this time that Pam really, really starts to miss Jim with an ache that hurts. Because who else is she supposed to discuss Michael and Jan with? Who else would stage an elaborate reproduction of the ballad of Michael and Jan over their lunch break?

Not that there is a lunch break in the Bahamas. It's kind of like, an all day lunch. Mainly a liquid lunch. Pam doesn't really mind. Pina Coladas are pretty delicious. She smiles up at the waiter from behind her Jackie-O sunglasses. He blushes a bit, she thinks, and he smiles back as he walks away.

Kelly would know how to flirt with the waiter, she thinks dejectedly. Kelly would know exactly how to get him to sleep with her. Pam's decided, the new Pam has decided that she wants to sleep with a waiter, or someone-anyone really- while she's here. It's just. Roy. You know? She was supposed to be here, having the best sex of her life, and happy, and instead-

She's got nothing. She feels nothing. Everything, everyone she thought she had had been a lie, a farce, and if Pam was the throwing things type, the dramatic type, the lounge chair she had been lounging on would be in the pool at that point. She takes another sip of her pina colada instead.

Kelly. Pam could model herself after Kelly. It could work. Kelly was open enough. She told everyone everything. She had boys, and boys as friends, and knew how to flirt, and liked Disney princesses, and was just uniquely and inexplicably always herself. Even when she wasn't herself.

Pam shakes her head. She's not making sense, even in her own head. Too much sun, or too many pina coladas, perhaps. It doesn't really matter. It's nine in the morning. The pool will start to fill with families and lovers and pretty blonde girls in packs working on their tans, still hungover from the night before. She'll miss the early morning quiet when she goes back home; when it's just her and Paulo and a steady stream of pina coladas, and sometimes, very early, around 6:30, the sound of Martin doing laps.

She pulls her legs over to the side, places her sunhat on her head, and ties her robe tightly around her, then looks down at herself and laughs. It's a gauzy robe, not meant to leave anything to the imagination. Katy, who had moved on from Jim to one of Roy's cousins, gave it to her at her bridal shower. She'd laughed at the expression on Pam's face. "Use it as a beach cover up then, Pam. Come on! Don't be so puritan, you're getting married!" Her voice rose to an excited squeak by the end of the sentence like it did every time she mentioned marriage. Katy, who Pam would like to be. Former cheerleader, knows what Jim's like in bed, undeniably happy.

Pam doesn't think she has the strength to be happy, to wander through life as more than a ghost, an emotional wreck. She smoothes a hand over her blown out hair, soft and relatively straight. It would be too much work to do at home, but here--

It was different here. She lets her hand drop to her robe's tie, and swiftly, viciously, undoes it. Slipping her feet into her flip-flops (in Australia they call them thongs, she remembers Jim saying) she glides into the resort café. Smiling, Paulo brings her a menu and shows her to a quiet side balcony over looking the bay. It's nice there, bright and cheerful and everything Pam wishes she could be. There are tiny boats paddling along, and maybe it's just the third pina colada talking, but she wishes she was out there, paddling along.

"Any plans for today, Mrs. Anderson?" Paulo asks, as he brings her a carafe of coffee.

"It's Beesly. Still Beesly." She smiles, a soft slow smile and shakes her head. "Call me Pam, anyway." She knows it's pointless, but it makes her feel better somehow that he knows. She's still Pam Beesly, not Pamela Anderson, a name she wishes she had thought about before she had started dating Roy. Still. At fifteen, who could've known she'd end up here? Alone? Almost Pam Anderson, but not quite.

Jim would've made a joke and bought her a fire-engine red swimsuit and then pretended to be David Hasselhoff for a whole day. But he won't and everything's changed and she doesn't know if she can fix it, fix them.

She's lost the two most important men in her life and nothing's ever going to be the same. She doesn't know who she is, or what she wants to do or who she wants to be and she feels hopelessly, impossibly alone.

She hands the menu back to Paulo. "Granola and yogurt with the fruit on the side again, please. Guess I'm pretty boring to wait on, huh?" Her voice cracks on the word boring.

"No. Never boring, Miss Beesly." He follows her gaze down to the bay and then out to the ocean. "There should still be room on the 4:30 excursion, if madam wishes."

"What? Oh. Kayaking, huh?" She gives him one of Jim's crooked smiles. About to refuse, she has an image of Jim hiking hills in New Zealand, bundled up from the wind and snow and avoiding sheep. "Yes. That would be nice. Thank you Paulo." She takes off her hat and sunglasses and smiles, really smiles.

* * *

His heart beats "pam, pam pam, pahpam." He shakes his head as he packs another box. She's gone, you fool, he thinks at his heart. She's gone and she's getting married and I will never, ever see her again. His bags are packed for Australia; his house is boxed, ready to be moved to Stamford as soon as he gets back. Connecticut. Huh. He hadn't really thought of that when he accepted the transfer. He'd thought of leaving home, leaving Pam, leaving his old job and running as fast as he could to better and brighter and less heart-wrenching things, but this is the first he has thought about the specifics. He'll have new coworkers, new offices, new cubicle, new apartment, new friends. New everything. 

He can start over, reinvent himself. He probably won't. Only--

He can't eat ham and cheese without thinking of her, he can't drink grape soda without thinking of her, he can't play endless games of FreeCell without thinking of her, and if every time he does something he normally does he thinks of her, he's bound to be insane by the end of the week.

Maybe he has to change. Grow up. Accept reality. Stop running away. (He won't manage the last one, he knows, but maybe he can run a little less far, a little less fast.)

He calls Jan and tells her he'll be starting a week early.

* * *

It's weird. Her mom had packed her suitcase for the trip-- "one less thing you'll have to worry about Pam," and she doesn't know how her mother managed to pack everything. Like, there's the lingerie Pam got from her bridal shower, fancy and new. (Which, fat lot of good that's doing Pam now. Except the robe. The robe is nice. Kind of like stupid Katy who Pam wishes she could hate more.) There's also three swimsuits Pam owns and two new besides; several pairs of board shorts and short sleeved tees; the infamous sunhat; two baseball caps; dancing heels and a flirty dress; a pair of Chacos; two pairs of sunglasses, and basically? Everything Pam had needed or wanted while on her solo honeymoon. It's like her mom knew that it wasn't going to be a weeklong sex marathon with Roy, and would need a bunch of stuff to distract her from the fact that she wasn't married. Still. 

And this is just like Roy, isn't it. When they got engaged after college, she thought, "This is it. I'm marrying my high school sweetheart and this is who I am." She took a job at the firm where he'd been working since after high school, a stupid receptionist job so they could save some money for the wedding and then maybe-

Well, she'd wanted to go to grad school, because everyone knows that art education B.A.s won't get you anywhere in life. But every year, as Roy couldn't set a date and more and more of 'their' money became his, a little more of that died.

So when she called off the wedding, she also called up the airlines and the resorts and switched everything over to the Bahamas, and fed Roy's tickets into the disposal. Thank god Roy had wanted to stay in some tourist trap international resort. It just made running away just that much easier. She can have a life again, the kind of life she would've had if she'd been alone, or with someone like J- no. Alone, she thinks fiercely.

She changes into a sporty bikini, throws on a pair of board shorts and a tank, and idles, one hand lingering over the sketchbook her mother packed for her. She has time, she knows-- a whole afternoon full until she has to report to the beach.

She picks up a book instead, a stupid Janet Evanovich book, and goes to read by the pool.

* * *

It's been a week since he called Jan, and Mark's taking him out for one last drink before he leaves. He's got everything boxed and taped shut, except for one box with his Australia suitcase, not even unpacked (what's the point?) and room for every last minute thing he's forgotten (his sheets, the x-box controller under the couch, two half empty bottles of whiskey- he'd give it to Mark but Mark hates whiskey ever since that night junior year when Stacey Kendall had shown them her breasts and Mark puked his guts out over her balcony, and Jim had been the one to sleep with her. For three weeks, actually. It was kind of awesome. - and a forgotten pair of Birkenstocks in the shed. Not that those are his, but he doesn't realize that until much later.) Mark's sent him up to the bar to get one last one last drink for them, while he's off with their friends, the whole gang at the pool table. 

Jim supposes he owes them. He is leaving Mark without a roommate, after all. Reaching into his back pocket to get his wallet out, he shrugs. Whatever. One last, one last. He looks down at the girl seated next to where he's walked up, and a glimmer of recognition sparks. She's uncharacteristically quiet, a half full pink cosmopolitan in front of her (he didn't even think they knew how to make cosmopolitans here,) and smudged eye makeup.

"Hey, Katy." he says, easing his limbs into the chair next to hers. She looks up, startled, and then her face eases.

"Hi Jim," she says, with a sad smile.

"What's up, Katy? How've you been?" She looks down into her cosmo again. "Hey. Cheer up, it can't be the end of the world." he says, smiling like he believes it.

"I just… broke up with my boyfriend. Who didn't want to commit. Again." She turns to face him. "Is there like, something defective with me? Like, some insane reason why guys who I've been dating for months won't even admit to the possibility that some day they might be okay with getting married? I'm not asking for a ring or a baby or a fence, just a clue that some day I can get married and have a family and everything I've wanted since I was five, Jim. Five years old, okay? And Chuck said that he couldn't see a future with me. What the hell is wrong with me?"

"Obviously your taste in men, Katy." He's trying for the joke, but his voice cracks a little. She's not the smartest girl in the entire world, but she's sweet, and nice, and good in bed. Fantastic, actually. She just wasn't--

"It's not you," he says slowly. "At least, for me, it wasn't about you. When I dated you, I was trying to move on from someone. As much as I liked you—I still like you-- it just all came down to the fact that you weren't her." He stares down into his beer as he continues. "I can't see myself with anyone but her, and now she's married and I was going to go to Australia to run away from her wedding but that didn't happen, so instead I'm just moving to Stamford, and then maybe I can find someone who makes me forget her, now that I don't have to see her every day." She reaches over to pat his shoulder as a tear slips down his face. Damn it. He hates Pam in this moment, for everything he's become. Some sad sucker who's crying in a bar to his ex-girlfriend.

She leans in and wipes the tear away from his cheek.

"Well, thanks, I guess. Not for going out with me, because" she stops to slug him in the shoulder, "that is a really jerky reason to go out with a girl, jerk. But thanks for being honest."

"To be fair," he says, his face serious, "it was only half about trying to move on from Pam. The other half was because you were really hot."

"Shut up, Jim!" she laughs.

"No, seriously. You were the hottest thing that office had seen in a long time. You were so hot that you got Dwight to buy a purse. Dwight! It was amazing." She laughs again, and straightens up in her chair.

"Jerk."

"Hey now, I just called you hot. That's a compliment there, missy." He beams down at her. "You should be happy."

"Shut up, Jim."

"HALPERT. I'M THIRSTY, WOMAN." Mark shouts from across the bar.

"COMING, ASSWIPE." Jim shouts back. He looks at Katy and smiles. Sadder than normal, but still a smile. "I've got my friends back there waiting. You want to come back and wish me bon voyage with them? Then you can tell me all about your stupid ex who let the prettiest bag saleslady in Scranton get away."

"Which one?" She gives him a grin as she slides down off her stool and bumps into him.

"I'd have to say the one that is not me."

"But where's the fun in that?" she says, grabbing her drink and winding towards the back of the bar.

* * *

Kayaking is amazing, Pam thinks. Her arms are sore, and she's flat-out-all-over-body-tired, and she has a date with Rick, her kayak partner, for tonight. He said he'd take her dancing, after she mentioned she'd tried it her first day and "you know, it was fun, but everyone was a good forty years older than me. Not entirely my scene." 

He jokes, "I never would've known you weren't a gold-digger just by looking at you," and it reminds her of Jim, so. When he asks her out, it's kind of easy to say yes. It's kind of easy to pretend he's Jim.

So when she gets dressed to go out, it's kind of easy to put on her fancy new lingerie underneath her dress, because that's what she would do for Jim.

* * *

"Pam's in Jamaica or something. You should call her once you've settled in." Katy says, rolling over to face him. 

"Mexico. They decided on Mexico." Katy stares for a moment, then grins.

"She didn't tell you? She called off the wedding." She punches him in the arm lightly. "Call her."

"Maybe I should call you." Jim smirks and rolls on top of her.

"Maybe you should, Jim Halpert." She says as she pulls his face down for a kiss.

They both know he probably won't.

* * *

Pam likes Rick. Like, genuinely likes Rick. So after he gives her her third orgasm of the night, she kicks him out of her hotel room. He looks confused as she does, but it doesn't matter anymore. She's got enough memories of men looking like puppy dogs after she's kicked them to last her. 

Eight years and she still can't just have a one night stand. She was stupid to think it would be easy to have just one date. She forgot about the part where they all fell in love with her.

She sighs, slumped against her door. It's not fair. She just wants to be normal for a while. Normal women go out and have one night stands and then cry to their girlfriends when he doesn't call and then go out and do it again. Eventually they find someone who wants to be in a relationship.

It's not supposed to be every guy she meets. It's not supposed to be eight years, and then bam! Another eight. And so on, and so forth, until Pam has spent her entire life not being single, not being herself. She sighs, again, as she pulls on her underwear and enough clothing to look decent. She hasn't really slept in a week. At least that's normal.

On a whim, she grabs her sketchbook as she heads out to the pool.

* * *

Katy's asleep. Katy's asleep and Jim's wide awake next to her staring at the ceiling. 2:45 a.m. It's late. The worst kind of late if you can't sleep- too late to get up and go out, but too early to be up again. 

He gets out of bed quietly. All the boxes are downstairs, waiting to be packed in the U-Haul. He could've hired a moving truck with company money, but he bartered with Jan to let him leave Scranton a thousand weeks early so he'd never have to see Pam again in exchange for moving his own crap. He'll buy new furniture once he's there.

It's 4 a.m. once the boxes are all nestled in the truck. The house seems empty with half of the stuff missing. Mark's home, passed out and snoring in his room (their walls seem so thin in the late night hours). Katy's still asleep. Of course she is. She sleeps normally, just like he can't. He doesn't know if he can wait until she wakes up. He won't sleep tonight, he knows, and it doesn't matter in the end either. He knows that too. She'll forgive him in the end. She deserves better things, a better man-- someone who isn't broken and half-alive.

He-- well, he knows that he'll never get over Pam without a clean break. Being with Katy tonight- she's wonderful, she's fantastic, but she's just a replacement Pam, and neither of them deserves that.

It won't be easy, starting over, but Jim knows he has to. He leaves a letter on the kitchen table, and a note. They won't be happy, but he isn't happy either.

He gets in the truck and starts to drive into the sunrise. As the new day dawns, he begins to grin.

* * *

She hears a faint twinkling, "look at the stars, look how they shine for you, and everything you do," over the hotel intercom as she gazes up into the black night. It's cold this time of evening or maybe she's just lonely. It doesn't matter anymore. She's drunk and thinking in bad pop songs and there's a pleasant ache between her thighs that makes her feel alive, but it still isn't enough. It might never be enough. She'll never know until she tries. 

She looks around cautiously, afraid someone is watching- but they aren't, it's three a.m. and everyone is asleep or drunk. She resolves to try surfing again tomorrow. The instructor was cute.

She laughs a little at herself. Is this what's happened to her? Pam Beesly, the wonderslut? Sleeping with a new guy every night to avoid her feelings? This wasn't the new Beesly she had in mind.

Still, as she remembers Rick's head in between her thighs, she can't say she entirely minds. Pam idly fingers the lace on her boy shorts underneath her pants. It's about time. Fancy new Beesly, indeed.

On a whim, she'd brought down her sketchbook with her. A smile takes hold of her features as the sun comes up. She picks her sketchbook up and begins to draw.


End file.
